


bitter and sick

by PoemIsDead



Category: JackSepticEye (YouTube RPF), Markiplier (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Anti is spiteful, Bitterness, Dark is in denial, Death, Hanahaki Disease, Hate Sex, Hatred, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Tragedy, Unhealthy Relationships, probably cliché
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-28 00:44:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15696708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoemIsDead/pseuds/PoemIsDead
Summary: There's an old wive's tale that says that the Hanahaki disease can be cured by killing the object of your affection.Of course, no one's stupid enough to really believe that.Right?





	bitter and sick

**Author's Note:**

> **Hanahaki Disease:** A disease in which someone loves a person they do not believe loves them back so deeply that the body revolts, flowers growing in their lungs, causing painful coughing fits that will eventually kill the victim. The disease can be cured by the person returning your affection, or by the victim managing to get past their infatuation.  
>  **Note:** This definition is heavily edited/tweaked for my purposes in this fic.
> 
> \-----
> 
> So this is nothing but angsty bitter feels, and it's probably cliche as fuck, but I really enjoyed writing it, so fuck it. Enjoy some cliche Danti Hanahaki tragedy and try to ignore the way I got a little too flowery with some of the writing :D

Dark and Anti had never been on what anyone in their right mind would call "good terms". Hell, their very first meeting had turned into a bitter, vicious fight, that only didn't end in death because another demon had ended up in the mix.

Well, it'd be more appropriate to say it didn't end in one of _their_ deaths.

But they'd been at each other's throats ever since, hateful and spiteful and constantly trying to one-up each other, even when the hate-fucking started. Dark was by far the biggest threat to his existence Anti had ever come across, a creature genuinely strong enough to match him. Or maybe even surpass him, if he was just a little more . . . _flexible_. The smug fuck relied far too much on his pride and intimidation, which left Anti to be the smart and wily one.

Not that he was complaining. It kept him alive, after all.

And there was something almost entertaining at having a proper opponent for once. Not a comrade or an equal, but still someone at his level, that kept life interesting, that got his blood boiling. Anti wouldn't be surprised if Dark _despised_ having someone who could match him, but the virus _relished_ in it, giddy to toy with something that added that rush of knowing if he fucked up, he was dead.

Dark seemed to hate every second he was forced to spend around the Irish demon. Even when he was fucking him into the wall with the kind of intensity that put pornstars to shame.

But Anti had never expected him to actually try to kill him.

The concrete tasted like smoke and asphalt, the filthy man-made floor greedily drinking up the blood dripping from his split lip as he twisted his head far enough to free his mouth. He could feel scrapes across his knees through his ripped jeans, and his palms were shredded from the force with which he'd been shoved into the cement. Nothing new, really. Dark had inflicted far worse damage in the past, even when they were just fucking. But there was something in the way he gripped him, some intent to the way he held him against the ground, that stirred an anxiety in his gut.

And Anti had learned long ago to listen to his gut.

"Well, hello to you, too," Anti grinned, spitting around the blood starting to pool from where he'd bitten his cheek. "Back so soon?"

Dark didn't respond, big hands pressing harder against his mortal body, too hard for him to glitch away. And he didn't like that. He didn't like any of that. There had always been a banter, a give and take between them, a game they played, and Dark was shitting all over those unspoken rules around their relationship.

"Yeh wet your wick, what, four days ago?" he asked, pressing against the ground to test the strength in those hands. "Five? I didn't expect teh see yeh so soon."

Strong. Way too strong. Anti could beat Dark hand to hand any day. He was flexible and wily and smart, and Dark was too fucking rigid, too fucking prideful to fight dirty. But this wasn't fighting. This wasn't fighting and this wasn't playing and this wasn't fucking, and Dark was stronger than he was outright. And none of Anti's smart little tricks meant shit if he couldn't move a muscle.

"You know I didn't peg yeh for such a horndog when I first met yeh," Anti cackled, wiggling - or, more aptly, _trying_ to wiggle - under Dark's weight as he tried to test for weaknesses. "If I'd known back then, I wouldn'teh been so hard teh catch."

He didn't like this. Anti wasn't one to be concerned - he'd gotten out of a lot in his life by knowing when it was best to just relax and cackle his way through problems. But this wasn't right. Dark's stony silence, the air around them, the twisting in his gut, it was all wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

"Or maybe I'd'a been harder, huh? You like when-"

"I should have killed you," Dark cut across him, his voice flat. Cold. _Dead_. "The first time I saw you."

Those heavy hands shifted over him, one knee digging sharply into his arm as a cold hand shoved into the back of his throat, too heavy, too strong, too-

He was going to kill him. Anti knew it, Anti was sure the second he spoke. He wasn't playing, he was genuinely going to kill him if he didn't do something.

Fuck.

"Awww, Darky, don't be like that," he crooned, voice light and playful as he went limp under him, sounding for all the world like he didn't give two shits about what was going on. There was a reason why Anti not only survived but _flourished_ in this harsh world of demons and death, why he could go toe to toe with a creature like Dark, who by rights should leave him in the dust by sheer power.

Anti was smart. And Anti was wily. And Anti was willing to drag himself through the dirt to survive, unlike the smug fuck egotist at his back.

The glitch demon let himself slip limp beneath him, like he wasn't worried, not in the least, before pushing his hips back up into Dark's arching form, grinding on him like a cheap whore.

"Isn't it so much more fun to have me around?"

Dark growled, a low sound that usually sent those fun kind of shivers up his spine, but this time made him want to sink his teeth into something in a different kind of fun way. The bigger demon pulled away, just a little, just enough to get out of range of Anti's seeking hips, just like Anti knew he would. Because he was too high and mighty to take that kind of _defemation_ , right?

Idiot.

It was enough of a shift to give him the leverage to shove off the ground, wrenching his leg to kick viciously at Dark's leg with a flexibility that probably shouldn't be possible for his body, but that he'd never thought twice about. He twisted sharply in the demon's grasp, dragging his other leg up to squeeze between them, before he lashed out, kicking hard enough to crack bone.

Dark hardly budged, an immovable slab of iron above him, but he didn't need much. Just the release of that impossible grip on him long enough to glitch away, letting the bindings of his body come apart into meaningless chaos that not even Dark could force into order, electricity tasting bitter and sharp on his tongue as his body crackled and snapped away a few feet, giving him the space he suddenly knew he needed.

"Wanna tell me what yeh want, Darky baby?" he asked, dusting his hands casually, even as his eyes flashed sharp, steely green flecks daring the fucker to try it again. "Or are we just gonna go at it and not use our big boy words?"

Dark was slow to stand, impossibly black eyes watching him with the kind of vitriol he'd only so rarely seen in his eyes. An icy, furious hatred that showed in his auras snapping like fabric in the wind, wild and hot and _angry_ , as he rose to that rigid, unyielding height. A statue in a thunderstorm, obstinate and solid, only the writhing shadows around it giving the impression of movement.

He was the most beautiful thing Anti had ever seen. It was a shame he was so fucking _stupid_.

For a moment, neither of them moved, Anti waiting with his broken grin as Dark stared him down with those vicious eyes. There was something going on the glitch was missing, some key ingredient to this sudden change that meant something important. He just didn't know what. Dark was waging some battle that wasn't just with him, and he wasn't fucking telling him. Just trying to get rid of the problem with that same prideful stubbornness he did everything with.

He saw the moment Dark made his decision. The way his shoulders set, the way his eyes hardened and his lip twitched, even before he rolled his neck, bones snapping sharply in the heavy air between him.

Yep. Definitely trying to kill him.

"Don't wanna talk about it?" Anti asked, grinning wide and wild as he watched Dark take the first step closer. The knife flickered into his hand, a natural extension, his only friend, kissed steel and blood like a lover in his grip.

He wasn't eager for this fight. He wasn't stupid and he wasn't prideful - he knew this was going to hurt, this was going to be rough, this was going to be hard. Fighting was fun, even when there was a good chance of death. But fighting a Dark intent on killing him . . . it wasn't something that filled him with murderous glee.

"Alright," he grinned, shrugging as he twirled the blade with deft fingers. "Let's go, buttercup."

He'd fought him before, of course. There was a grace to the way Dark fought, a beauty in the sheer power he radiated as he crashed through the air like a thunderclap, and Anti had taken more than a few opportunities to rile him up just to watch that savage beauty. He couldn't pretend he hadn't loved every second, loved watching that cool facade crumble away as the virus dug his way under his skin like no one else did. There was a pride in that. In getting to see it. In knowing he won every time Dark shattered, every time he painted him in new bites and bruises, every time he slammed him into the floor and made him taste blood as he fucked him until he screamed.

This wasn't like that. There was still a beauty in it, but it was twisted, warped, _wrong_. There was something that tilted all of Dark's movements the wrong way, that tainted the crackle of his aura until he looked like some sick mockery of the demon he usually danced with.

He hated this.

"That was sloppy," Anti mocked in a sing-song voice as his sweet knife cut the creature deep across his shoulder, slicing through muscles and tendons until he would have rendered a mortal useless. Blood should have poured from the wound like juice from a rotten fruit, pretty colors in the artificial light. But of course it didn't, just opened a slice to that endless void swirling inside him, ripping the warmth from the room, the light and sound until everything tilted oddly.

Dark didn't answer, his lips pulling back in a feral snarl instead as he pivoted to launch at the glitch again, energy ripped from the air around him with a viciousness that staggered him almost enough to get him caught.

Choosing to fight Dark like this wasn't smart. It was like bringing a knife to a gun fight, as they said. One wrong move and he was dead. One trip up and he was utterly fucked, and it was only his speed and wits that kept him from death's clutches as Dark came down on him like a hurricane.

"What's got yer knickers in a twist?" Anti chanted as he danced away again, glitching across the room, broken and unpredictable as the void chased him like a magnet. "Gonna tell me before yeh kill me? Or am I not worth enough teh tell?"

The fist caught him by surprise, a painfully mortal attack that caught him square across the jaw, slamming him back against a heavy concrete pillar before Dark was slamming into him in turn, and Anti saw stars as his head cracked across the cement.

"How **dare** you?"

Dark's voice rippled in rage around him, reverberating as it seemed to lose its shape, and Anti's vision swam as he struggled to suck in air around the arm jammed under his chin. Dark's voice rumbled through his chest, meaningless words spinning for a moment as the void and the pressure and the pain sucked all coherent thought out of Anti's head, before the virus was yanking his feet up, using Dark's hold on him to support him as he kicked out hard right into the fucker's gut.

Dark doubled over, giving him enough room to glitch away again, rage ripping across his skin, tearing and breaking it in corrupted pixels as he snarled and paced and twisted the knife in his hand.

"Teh fuck's your problem, edgelord? Someone steal your makeup? Are yeh PMSing? 'cause yeh sure as fuck ain't mad at me for nothin' I did." His words were coming out in a jumbled, glitching mess, but they were understandable. Dark had understood worse distortions when he had the demon struggling to remember the goddamn English language, so he sure as fuck understood this. "Last I saw you, I bit yer shoulder open and marked yeh up right pretty, and you _liked it_ , so fuck right off with this gettin' pissy a few days later shit."

The void demon was still doubled over, fingers sending spiraling cracks up the concrete pillar as he pressed his hand across it for support. He was sucking in raw, gasping breaths, a crude growl rattling around the sound as he no doubt raged at the sheer _indignity_ of Anti knocking the wind from him.

Anti hadn't done _shit_ to him. Hell, he'd been downright _civil_ with him lately, playing _nice_ for god's sake. He'd hardly even teased him the last time he saw him, let him drag him down without anything more than a token fight, a few cuts on his pretty face just to remind him he could. But nothing like they used to. The fighting was just for fun now. The mockery and games just a way to see the spark in those dead eyes. He'd thought . . .

"So what'd I do, huh?" The knife shattered and rebuilt itself in his grip, vibrating against his skin hard enough to rattle his bones, pixels snapping across his cheek as he flickered in the bland, washed out light. "What'd little ol' _me_ do to the almighty fuckin' _Darkiplier_ to get him all-"

And then he stopped, a single broken pixel repeating over his face and blade alike as he stared at the creature.

Dark was coughing, an awful wretching noise ripped from his throat as his body shuddered. The cracks in the pillar were arching higher, dust shaking from the demon's grip as he struggled to catch a breath, and it looked all too human, all too _weak_ for the man who wouldn't even fucking _blink_ in front of some people.

But that wasn't what made Anti stop. It wasn't the way his auras were splintering like fractured glass, or the way he sounded like he was trying to breathe around the same.

It was the rose petals scattering at his feet. The rose petals falling over his fingers like he was trying to catch him. The rose petals slipping past his lips as he made those awful noises.

Oh.

_Oh._

Anti had only seen it in person once. But he knew what it was. Everyone knew what it was. Everyone knew what spitting up flower petals meant, what it did to the person, why it happened.

Hanahaki. The disease of unrequited love.

Dark was literally choking on his feelings.

There was no way for anyone but the victim to know who the petals were for. But Anti wasn't an idiot. He was the smart one between them, after all. Dark was here, trying to kill him. Because he believed that stupid old wive's tale. Because that was the only solution he saw for this _weakness_.

Those flowers were for Anti. And Dark would rather kill his little problem than risk being vulnerable. For even a _second_.

There was a long moment of silence as the coughing fit subsided, Dark's fingers pressing further into the concrete, pulverizing the material under his fingers like sugarglass. He hadn't looked up, just standing there, still doubled over, breathing slowing bit by bit as he recovered from the attack, demonic body healing the damage as fast as it had the wound to his shoulder.

Just erased it away.

Like he wanted to do to Anti.

Because he loved him.

Anti's laughter cracked through the air like a gunshot, too loud in the echoing space, high and vicious and mocking as stepped forward, eyes hot and wild.

"That's what this is about?" he screeched, body shaking, glitching, as he watched Dark turn furious eyes to him. Eyes so full of hate and anger he was suprised they stayed black instead of _burning_ with their rage. "That's what's got yeh so fuckin' twisted? 'cause _Darkipoo_ has _feelings?_ "

He cackled, screeching and high, almost hysterical as he stumbled on legs that seemed to refuse to stay corporeal. How stupid. How _stupid_. That this was his solution, this was what he turned to when faced with something as simple as love. Dark was as emotionally stunted as a fucking 5-year-old sociopath. All that power, all that incredible strength, that beautiful masterpiece of a body, and he couldn't even handle wanting someone.

"You _idiot_ ," he spit, the laughter twisting his voice up so brutally he wasn't sure anyone would be able to understand it. But the meaning was clear. Every word he spit was mocking, cruel, bitter.

Hysterical.

Because Anti wasn't an idiot.

Anti wasn't an idiot, and sometimes he wished he was.

He wished he could believe something so simple could fix all his problems. Could have that blind faith that he could get out of anything because he was strong enough to fix it. Be that far in denial.

But he wasn't an idiot.

He didn't get to believe, even for a second, that he wasn't going to die.

Maybe it wouldn't happen here. Maybe not right now. He might get away. He might even hurt Dark bad enough that it'd take him a while to find him again. But Dark wouldn't let him live. Not now, not once he'd decided to kill him. He had to follow through, had to keep up his image, had to erase any possible source of vulnerability.

Like Anti.

Anti was a weakness for him.

The grin that thought engendered felt like it had been carved into his face with white hot metal.

"Oh, you must _hate_ that," the glitch cooed with his manic grin, feeling the way the hand gripping the knife kept unraveling into bits of meaningless code before reforming again. He'd come apart at the seams so many times before, he wasn't surprised this time didn't look any different. "Darky, Darky, Dark, god among demons, brought down by ooey gooey _lo_ -"

The fist almost caught him again, cracking through the air like a whip as Anti let his tenuous grip on reality slip, body shattering into broken pieces before rebuilding itself a few feet away. Dark was on him again without reprieve, fast and brutal, and Anti could barely concentrate long enough to laugh as he flitted just out of the creature's grasp.

He really was beautiful, wasn't he? All that rage cracking over his shell to carve chaotic fractals across his face, power tasting like some rich static across his tongue, a cabernet to his absinthe. They were on opposite sides of a spectrum, chaos and control, but so alike in so many ways.

He'd been intrigued by him the first time he saw him. Drawn to power, drawn to strength, drawn to his pretty fucking face. And there was nothing quite like winding him up into a furious dog, intent on forcing the glitch to submit even as Anti reveled in the glee of knowing he was too flexible to ever break to the void.

They were _fun_ together. And it was so hard to find someone _fun_. Anti couldn't remember the last thing he'd found that interested him, that stuck around in his mind more than a few seconds in all the screaming and static. But Dark was there, bleeding through his mind like a drop of ink in water.

"How long's it been?" Anti called in a high voice, glitching sharply away as aura's lashed at him like a vicious master's whip. "How long 'ave yeh been spittin' up yer girly vomit?"

They fought. Viciously. They tore each other to pieces, they mocked and they inflicted pain and they were utterly cruel to each other. But that was part of it. Anti wouldn't take the time to come up with new torments for the demon if he didn't think him _worth_ it.

But what was he to Dark? What worth could he possibly have to that sick ego _fuck_ when he hadn't even _considered_ fucking _trying_.

"Ohhh, I wish I'd'a been there."

He'd rather _kill_ him. He'd rather kill him than just . . . try. He'd rather kill him than put himself at Anti's mercy for even a _second_.

"Seen the look on that stupid face a'yers when yeh coughed up that first petal."

Anti wasn't one for feelings himself. He'd probably rather rip his own tongue out than admit he loved someone. But he would have tried.

"Seen yeh struck right dumb."

He would have tried, if it was him.

"Yeh were, weren't yeh?"

But not Dark.

"Poor Darky."

Not Dark.

"Realizin' yer right fucked-"

It wasn't a fist that caught him this time. It was a hand, open-palmed, slamming into his skull with enough force to blind him, vision swimming black as the world tilted oddly. His back slammed into something solid, too solid, a crack ripping through the air that he couldn't tell the source of. Air rushed from his body, sharp and cold, pain lancing through him like a bolt of lightning, and he couldn't even cry out, robbed as he was of breath.

The hand felt like ice against his forehead, big fingers threading cruelly through his hair as it dragged him forward, only to slam him back again. His teeth _snapped_ together at the force, splitting his tongue as he struggled to see around the nauseating spinning the blows had caused, and he groaned as he tried to focus on the figure towering over him, knife fracturing and rebuilding in his grip.

"You are an insufferable child." That rich, seething voice sounded like it was coming from all around him, echoing through his pounding skull as he struggled to rip air back into his mortal lungs. "Playing games with those patient enough to tolerate you."

The grip tightened, shooting a piercing pain through him, like his skull was about to implode from the sheer force of it. There was a rushing in his ears that he couldn't seem to escape, and the only other sound that seemed to pierce it was Dark's voice, growled right into his ear now.

"I've run out of patience, Anti."

"Oh, Darky," Anti laughed, and his voice sounded throttled, raw and spent as he tried to remember how to use his hands. The world was still a swirling blackness, punctuated by black eyes and a black voice, a wetness he was sure was blood making a mess of his neck and cold fingers in his hair his entire world just then.

He tried to focus his eyes. Tried to point sharp, cutting green flecks at the demon towering over him, lips pulling back in a wicked, manic smile that even still tasted of exhaustion. Tried so hard to turn his slurring voice into something softly patronizing.

"It was never a game."

His vision had cleared enough that he got to see the flash of anger across Dark's face, the expression like Anti had slapped him, like Anti had said it just to hurt him.

He did want him to hurt. But that's not why he said it. Dark would hurt no matter what, he didn't really need to do anything. The idiot was trusting an old wive's tale, one that said the Hanahaki disease could be cured if the victim managed to kill the object of their affection before they choked on the petals. And it was true, to a degree. To be able to commit such a heinously _selfish_ act, to _kill_ the person you supposedly _loved_ just to save your own life - that wasn't love anymore. It turned it into something else, something twisted enough that it _might_ cure Hanahaki simply for the fact that you didn't truly love them, and you came to realize that.

But not for Dark. Dark was too twisted to begin with. Dark could absolutely kill something he cared for, could absolutely rip it from existence without hurting what his fucked up mind considered love.

Selfish, hypocritical, egotistical brute.

But Anti didn't need to do a damn thing to hurt him. He would do it to himself. He thought he was winning, thought he was cutting out a cancer before it could consume him. But the cancer was too deep in him at this point, so ingrained in his fucking soul that his body was trying to kill him out of the belief that Anti would never love him back.

In the end, his body would win. He'd still die, just the same. He was just sealing his fate, ensuring there was no fix, signing his own death warrant.

Dark would die, just as surely as him. Only he got to choke on flowers, while Anti . . .

His hands snapped out just in time to catch Dark's as it lunged at his gut, his knife sinking itself into the monochrome skin, slipping so prettily between radius and ulna before splitting out the other side, painfully cold from ripping through that void. Anti held onto the knife handle with every ounce of strength contained in his wiry little demon body, reserves he rarely pulled from feeding a hopeless attempt to stop the impossible strength that was Dark.

Green eyes ripped reluctantly away from that achingly pretty face, focusing messily on the blackness pooling over his blade, and the way veins were popping out over the hand reaching for him, muscles straining against his too-tight suit. There was no weapon in the void's hand, nothing that would imply he could kill him with it, as Anti could come back from nearly any mortal wound. But he was absolutely certain if he let that hand reach him, he was dead.

"Dark-" he ground out, searching for some teasing biting words, even as he felt that hand inch ever closer. He wrapped his free set of fingers over the place where the blade jutted out of gray skin, shoving hard, not caring about the way his pretty knife sliced his hand to the bone. He pressed hard against the hand still shoving his head against the pillar, desperate to escape the pressure keeping him from glitching away, even as he watched in some kind of sick fascination as his blood dripped over the pooling blackness from the creature's arm.

It was such a pretty picture.

Not a bad last thing to see.

"Dark-" he tried again, voice cracking as his body shook, glitches and pixelations flashing across his body as he felt that hand slip closer.

He wasn't strong enough to stop it. He was going to die. Right here. He didn't even get a reprieve, didn't get to experience the terrifying thrill of having Dark chase him down. This was all he got. Just a quick fight in some abandoned car park before Dark finished him off like a midnight snack.

He hoped it hurt. Spitting up every one of those petals. He hoped he lived long enough to start spitting up the stems, that it was rose thorns ripping him apart inside that eventually killed him. He hoped the last thing the fucker thought of was Anti's bloodied manic grin, and the way he'd killed him in the middle of the night like some human drug deal gone wrong. Meaningless and quick. Worthless.

Dark leaned closer, a low rumble in his chest, like some otherworldly growl, and Anti felt the second the strength in his arm got to be too much. He held it for a second, entire body shaking, glitching, jumping, before the hand he had wrapped around the end of the blade slipped, too much blood to get a good grip, and the demon's hand slammed into his gut with enough force to drive the air from him once again.

He coughed, struggling to gasp, but his lungs had constricted sharply, refusing to take a breath as he tried to process the sudden icy cold in his gut. Dark had hit him with an open palm, he could see it, no weapon in sight. But it felt like he'd pierced him with a knife made of dry ice, impossibly cold and . . . _dead_. Dead, it was like death itself had just been shoved beneath his skin, crawling slowly up to wrap around his lungs, creeping towards the erratic beat of his heart.

Dark was still leaned over him, close enough to feel the auras brushing over his skin, the void pulling what little warmth was left inside him. The palm pressed against his forehead had lessened its force, fingers tangled almost softly in his messy bangs now, and Dark was breathing slow, heavy breaths, the air from his lips ghosting softly over the bare skin at the juncture of his shoulder and throat.

It was achingly close to another memory. Dark's fingers running almost softly through his hair, skull aching and tingling from how hard he'd pulled it minutes before. His forhead resting against Anti's back as he tried to catch his breath, cock softening inside the glitch as Anti hummed in satisfaction. Just a second, a brief slice of time between cutting jabs and vicious snips. One single moment of peace between them when they were simply too tired and satisfied to fight.

Had Dark already known at that point? Did that little moment ache in his chest hard enough to make flowers bloom and choke him until he couldn't stand it? Had he thought of that in bitterness as he decided his only chance was to kill the demon who'd found taunting him to be one of his favorite things in the world?

He hoped it hurt, that memory. He hoped every single memory he had hurt. He hoped _this_ hurt. He hoped he made it hurt, that this would echo through his thick fucking skull when he finally realized there was no escaping it.

Anti's ruined hand reached up weakly to grab at Dark's arm, smearing blood across his pristine suit. Good. Ruin it. Ruin him. Make him _hurt_.

"It might have worked, yeh know."

His voice was painfully raw, scratching and breaking as he struggled to get the words out. It hurt to speak, muscles in his gut spasming around whatever damage Dark had done. But it was worth it. It was worth it for the way he felt that stupid, dumb fuck tense above him, knowing he was turning hateful eyes on his face now.

"If yeh'd tried," he ground out, grinning as he watched Dark's face through eyes that struggled to focus. "It might have worked."

He blinked, vision clearing long enough to watch the nameless expression twist across Dark's face, something vicious and painful, something _raw_ , and he felt the aching in his chest ease just a little as he recognized the pain.

He'd hurt him. He could still hurt him. Dark still loved him.

He was going to die, just the same as him.

Dark's eyes were wide, angry, shattered, and it took him a long time to realize there was a splash of color there, a broken line that cut across his face, ripping through the monochrome to show startling warm hues. Tan skin, pink lips, brown eyes. His auras had ripped themselves in a twisted, angry spiral that left cracks over his body, jagged little lines where they didn't rip every drop of color out of him. Where they showed what he looked like without all that darkness ravaging his soul.

So his eyes were brown. That was fitting.

He wondered if his own eyes would go back to blue when he died.

He wondered if Dark cared enough to see.

"Guess you'll never know," Anti said with a shaky little laugh, grin weak but reaching his eyes as he started to sink down the pillar behind him.

The rips in Dark's aura were already mending, the damage soothed over and hidden behind that impenetrable wall of power, his eyes already shutting out that hint of weakness. But he'd seen it. Anti had seen it. Dark might have killed him, but Anti would still be the death of him, and he'd still seen that vulnerability Dark was trying so hard to hide.

Just his. All of it was his. That sweet pain fading in the other demon's eyes, and the choking death waiting for him some time in the future. Anti got to claim it all.

And that . . . that wasn't so bad.


End file.
